Wednesday, March 03, 2010

The power of enthusiasm

A friend of mine invited me to the theatre for a tv registration of NotaBene, with text by the Dutch author Willem Wilmink set to music. At the last moment my friend was not able to come so I ended up going with a lady friend of his.

This evening waiting in the row for our tickets, I told enthusiastically of my latest scheme of conquering the world .. Meina was amused and so was the gentleman standing right behind me. We ended up sitting next to each other. When I mentioned the 37,000 pictures of the Tropenmuseum, he interrupted me and told me that it was more then likely that family pictures of his would be among them.

We had a real interesting conversation, we exchanged e-mail addresses and he promised me to send me a picture produced from one of his glass negatives. I asked him to send me the picture he likes best. His grandfather worked for the customs office and consequently he had to move house every two years. This resulted in pictures from all over Indonesia.

This is a family picture I received from Colin.. He pointed out the giant clam shell in the foreground.


What are the chances for something like this to happen? It does however show that many people have material that is worthy of becoming part of a collection like the one of the Tropenmuseum.

Thanks,
GerardM

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Try to contact the Indonesian community, e.g. in The Hague, where thousands of (family-) pictures must be hidden on atticks or in cellars. Or, and why not, already have been digitilized for further use. Seek and you shall find...

Collin said...

Nice blog you wrote. Thank you for posting.